Excitement has been building about this teen horror movie written by Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard. A group of great-looking young people go for a break in a remote woodland cabin; horrible things happen. It looks like the kind of thing often seen before and yet still springs all kinds of tricks. Released on 13 April.

This biopic of Bob Marley has been a long time in the works, with Martin Scorsese and Jonathan Demme once attached, but now Kevin Macdonald takes the helm. Marley rose from poor beginnings in Jamaica to superstardom and after his death to iconic status: a new Che. Yet the film shows a flawed man whose relationship with his wife and children was fraught. 20 April.

For its co-writer and star Glenn Close this has been a passion project, and one that got her an Oscar nomination this year. Nobbs is a prim eccentric fellow in 19th-century Dublin, employed as a waiter in a hotel but planning to save money and one day own his own business. When he is forced to share a room one night, a strange secret emerges. 27 April.

A warm welcome back to the elegant film-maker Whit Stillman, whose east-coast sophistication has not been fashionable for a while. Greta Gerwig stars in this talky romantic comedy about sexy-plus-smart young co-eds who must negotiate the intellectual and emotional minefield that is the modern campus. 27 April.

Powell and Pressburger's glorious 1943 film gets a welcome rerelease. Roger Livesey plays General Clive Wynne-Candy, first as a pop-eyed old reactionary, and then a passionate young soldier: it's a moving study of how we grow old. 18 May.

Audiences at festival screenings of The Raid, from Welsh director Gareth Evans, have been stunned. Some detest the violence; others say it's the best action movie for years. A special forces police team storms into a derelict high-rise in Indonesia, which is the fortified hideout of a drug lord. The result is intricately choreographed mayhem and lots of gore. 18 May.

Moonrise Kingdom (dir. Wes Anderson)

Wes Anderson was widely felt to have got his groove back after his wittily Americanised Fantastic Mr Fox. His new comedy, chosen to open this year's Cannes film festival in May, concerns a young couple in small-town 60s America who run away together, causing local uproar. Bill Murray, Tilda Swinton and Harvey Keitel star. 25 May.

Ken Loach develops his comic register with a Scottish-set movie that tastes of Bill Forsyth and Alexander Mackendrick. Some guys facing prison or the dole find there is a way out – they may just be in a position to bring to the public the finest malt whisky in Scotland. 1 June.

Bela Tarr, the legendary Hungarian proponent of "slow cinema", has had the inspired idea of making a film – shot in 30 long takes – about what happened to the horse Friedrich Nietzsche threw his arms around in Turin, in a frenzy of compassion and despair at seeing it being mistreated. The horse is owned by a farmer who depends on this ailing beast for his livelihood. 1 June.